The Lost Memoir of Sherlock Holmes
by Daroga's Rainy Daae
Summary: Two detectives stumble upon an unpublished memoir of a Holmes case which strangely depicts a character identical to a killer of the present day.When Sherlock's and the modern world connect, life becomes much harder for our heroes...


"Detective!"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I think you should come take a look at this."  
  
Detective Lucy Becker climbed over the mixed rubble of plaster and broken furniture in a house that was run down and had not been occupied for years. She flicked her flashlight back and forth uneasily as random creaks and rat-chatters could be heard around her. Becker glanced at the dripping cement ceiling of the basement and spat defiantly at a dust-covered china dish. She followed the voice of her partner and shined the flashlight into his eyes.  
  
"I really wish you wouldn't do that," he said seriously, squinting into the light. Becker snorted and approached him.  
  
"Find any trace of J.J.? I still can't believe he hid out here for two months and left no fingerprints," Becker muttered, stooping to where her companion pointed.  
  
"No, but check out this notebook," he said, handing her a pile of loose pages that rained dirt. She paused and stared at him in disbelief.  
  
"Luke…"  
  
"Just read the name!" he encouraged her. Becker took a brush from her back pocket and began to clear off the dirt, but Luke took a huge breath and blew it off, excitedly.  
  
"All right, all right," she replied, rolling her eyes. "_Doctor John Watson_." She shifted her position and used the handle side of her brush to flip the page, carefully. "_Holmes and I had just sat down to discuss the latest news after a trying day when there was a prompt knock on the door. My friend said he'd receive the visitor, but as he looked thoroughly irritated by the abrupt interruption, I decided I should answer the door and take care of whatever the caller might want. Of course, when I opened the door, I didn't expect to see an old acquaintance of long ago by the name of Jonathan Jeffrey_- Hey!"  
  
"I know!" Luke said, eyes shining. "Is that the most bizarre thing you've ever read, or what?"  
  
"I've just become thoroughly confused," Becker said, biting her lip. "That's our same J.J. Unless… the book is a fake."  
  
"It's not a fake!" Luke insisted. "Look at these pages! Look at the date! The binding is outdated… This notebook has to be at least a hundred years old, if not, more."  
  
"Then it's a different J.J.," Becker said, adamantly.  
  
"No," Luke said, resolutely. "Keep reading. It gets weirder."  
  
Lucy gave him a skeptical look, but continued with the story. "-_Jonathan Jeffrey Warner, who seemed just as shocked to see me and who I recognized for his distinct and characteristic piercing, green eyes. I didn't know what he wanted, and I could not have guessed for the world. He was a doctor who had treated the soldiers of the same regiment as I had until he left suddenly and most unexpectedly only a few days after he had come._   
  
"_I remembered him not only because of his eyes, but because of his reputation. It was his duty to oversee the health of those in need of intensive care, but I noticed his methods were dubious when he began to treat the patients with bottled substances I had not ever heard of and could not name to you now. I was slow in thinking these substances might be the latest medicines from his country, as I was sure he was not an Englishman. His behavior was completely foreign to me, and his accent was strange.  
_  
"_What this man used on the sick and wounded men killed them quickly and silently in a matter of minutes, but he did this to each man one at a time, one man every day, so that I did not become suspicious until the third man had died, thinking until then that they had died from their injuries. I alerted authorities as quickly as possible, and that was when Warner disappeared forever. Until now.  
_  
"_'I must speak with one Sherlock Holmes,' the man said, brushing past me in the most discourteous manner, knowing that I already despised him. Holmes, on the other hand, seemed unfaltering against this temperamental killer.  
_  
"_'Holmes,' I addressed him, remaining calm as Warner approached my friend. 'This man is a murderer.'  
_  
"_Holmes merely glared at the doctor and said, calmly; 'I hope the carriage ride over was pleasant, although you may want not to rush so quickly from your country home, and do mind the brush on your front lawn. Your fox terrier has a tooth missing, you work with your hands and you should fire your maid.'  
_  
"_The man looked menacingly at Holmes and spat; 'I didn't ride over in a carriage, I live in the city, I don't have any brush in my front lawn but rather loosestrife, but it's in my back yard. I don't own a dog, and the tooth you see is not from him-' the man brushed a small animal tooth from his sleeve, goaded, and continued in much the same rude manner. '-Any fool works with his hands, but I don't work for an industry as you might suggest, and I would sooner-' (I dare not repeat what this man said at this point) '-before I hired a maid.'  
_  
"_This dialogue was followed by complete silence as a spiteful rage rose in Holmes. He concealed it so well that any man who was not as close to him as I was would not have seen it, but it angered him so much that it frightened me to see my friend finally outdone by such a contemptuous man as Jonathan Jeffrey Warner._"  
  
Lucy turned the page to read on, but paused in her steady story that had caused Luke to wander off and imagine the scene. He immediately broke from his daydreams and waved his hand at Lucy to continue.  
  
"And…" she said, biting her lip. "That's it."  
  
"That's it?"  
  
"There's no more. The rest of the pages are blank," Lucy said, flipping the pages for Luke to see.  
  
"That is so very odd…" Luke muttered to himself. "Do you even realize what we have here?"  
  
"A work of fiction written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that was never completed because he feared his fans would hate him forever if his antagonist Sherlock Holmes was wrong for once?" she guessed.  
  
"First of all," Luke said, "Sherlock was the protagonist; get it right next time. Second, it wouldn't make sense to drive him to write something like this. Third, _check the freaking date_."  
  
"What's so important about the date?" Lucy grumbled in reply, shifting again and shining her flashlight on the cover of the notebook. "It says 1882. So what?"  
  
"So," Luke said. "Sherlock Holmes stories weren't written until 1887!"  
  
"So what?" she repeated. "Maybe this is the first Sherlock Holmes sketch that never made it."  
  
"Aha!" Luke said, triumphantly. "That's what I thought at first, too! Not only are you contradicting yourself, since you figured he stopped writing it for the fans, because at that point: What fans? but also there's the tiny fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fashioned Sherlock after a doctor he knew while he was a doctor, himself. But Doyle didn't become a doctor until 1885!"  
  
"How do you know this stuff?" Lucy asked, disgusted.  
  
"I'm a fan," Luke said, turning red.  
  
"You're a loser," Lucy jeered.  
  
"That's not the point," Luke grumbled, snatching the notebook from Lucy. "The point is, I think this notebook is real."  
  
"Well, duh."  
  
"No!" Luke cried, his voice trembling with enthusiasm he tried to keep under control. "This could very well be…" he took a breath to create a dramatic pause and leaned in close to his friend; "the lost memoir of Sherlock Holmes, written by the real Doctor Watson!"  
  
Lucy burst out laughing.  
  
"Not funny," Luke said, hurt.  
  
"You're an ass," she retorted, fwapping Luke upside the head. "And you're loopy. Are you trying to tell me that you think some literary character made up by some guy, is real?"  
  
"Yes," Luke answered, pathetically.  
  
Lucy began to laugh again, but her giggles were interrupted by a loud bang that shook the entire house and caused plaster to fall around the two of them. Both detectives suddenly became alert, and whipped out their guns, holding them steadily in front of them as the dust cleared. There was a clunking, and Lucy realized-  
  
"Somebody's upstairs," she whispered, quickly.  
  
The pair stepped quietly yet swiftly over the debris of the basement and snuck up the stairs, weapons at the ready and faces serious. Lucy pressed her ear to the basement door and heard the soft sound of voices she couldn't recognize.  
  
"Augh…"  
  
One of the voices was male, and he sounded hurt.  
  
"Hold on! No, try to get up!" another voice said, hoarsely.  
  
"What… is this?" yet another voice asked, fearfully, having to talk with effort.  
  
"We have to go! Let me have that, don't worry! Come on, we have to leave, someone will have heard…" the second voice cried, and only then did Lucy recognize it as J.J.'s. Luke had come up behind her and she mouthed to him what she knew, but Luke shushed her and raised up three fingers, counting down. When he reached one, the pair burst through the door, shouting synchronically-  
  
"Freeze!"  
  
Two unknown men lay dazed and injured on the floor while J.J. tucked something hastily into his pocket and bolted for the front door.  
  
"I'll shoot!" Luke shouted, but Lucy dove for J.J. and tackled him to the ground. She would have had him, but something unexpected suddenly occurred:  
  
The room flickered brightly around them and for almost a solid minute, it changed completely. The room was flooded with light, and heavy curtains lined the windows. Intricately woven rugs were spread across a polished wooden floor, a velvet armchair stood in a corner of the room, and on a table next to the armchair was a long, black pipe, smoking slightly. On one of the rugs was a couch perpendicular to a stone fireplace where logs crackled merrily on the hearth. The men still lay dazed on the floor and Luke still stood with an aghast look on his face, similar to Lucy's.  
  
Suddenly as it had appeared, the lavish room sputtered like a car running low on gas and returned to it's normal state, though somehow during the middle of the phenomenon, the murderer J.J. had escaped.  
  
"No!" Becker shouted, stumbled over herself to rush out the front door only to be greeted by an empty street. "Damn!" she cursed passionately, curling her fists in her agitation and running back inside. "He was so close… I had him… This case has been going on for years, and I had him! It could have been in the bag…" She hit her fists against the wall and screamed for good measure. A groan from one of the men on the floor jolted her from her anger as she remembered the scenario.  
  
"Oh my god," Luke muttered, looking bewildered. "Oh my god."  
  
"Luke, what's wrong with you? Pull yourself together," Lucy grumbled, brushing herself off and standing up straight. "We have to question these guys."  
  
"Talk about your blast from the past," he said, laughing nervously.  
  
"What are you talking about?" Lucy asked, glaring at him. Luke merely pointed at the two men, who both had seemed to have been in a recent fight. One had a nasty gash on his forehead, and the other was completely unconscious.  
  
"Their outfits," Luke said, frustrated that Lucy couldn't see.  
  
"They're dressed up," Lucy remarked, plainly.  
  
"Look closer!"  
  
Lucy put her hands on her hips and muttered something incoherent under her breath and tried to calm herself down. She couldn't think properly. All she could think about was how close she had been to catching a killer. Once she'd gathered herself appropriately, she glanced at the men's clothes. Her jaw dropped.  
  
"Boy, do these guys have bad taste," she said, horrified.  
  
"Lucy!" Luke shouted. "They're not from here! W-well - yes, yes, they're from here, but not from here, this time, they're not from this time period!" he blurted. "Did you see this room? It was the same room, it was! It was furnished… We saw the past… We saw what this room once was, and these men are from that past!"  
  
"Get a hold of yourself," Lucy snapped in reply. "It can't be possible. It just can't happen."  
  
"It can, Luc'," Luke insisted. "It can, and it did. It did!"  
  
Lucy was about to make a smart remark when the man with the gash on his head sat up slowly, stared at her and Luke with a most frightful and confused expression and said with a mixture of urgency and effort; "I am Doctor John H. Watson, and I would very much like to know what just happened."  
  
It was about this time that Lucy's eyes rolled up into her head as she promptly clunked to the floor in a dead faint.

A/N: Don't worry; this story will get funnier! Hope you liked it so far!


End file.
